Christina Frederick, PhD, and Peter Harms, PhD

Frederick is a professor in the behavior and social sciences department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Harms is a professor of management at the University of Alabama.

Tell us a bit about your background: What is your area of research? What is your most recent journal-editing experience?

Christina M. Frederick: I am a professor of psychology at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. I have worked there for 23 years and have previously served in executive leadership roles, such as senior executive vice president for academics and research. I am also a former president of the Society of Psychologists in Leadership. My research has focused on motivation in applied domains, and I often write about leadership.

Throughout my career, I have reviewed articles across a variety of journals. I served on the editorial board of the Journal of Sport Behavior and was on the editorial board of Psychology of Leaders and Leadership (PLL) before being named coeditor.

Peter D. Harms: I received my PhD from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and was a postdoc at the Gallup Leadership Institute at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. I am currently the Frank Schultz Professor of Business at the University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College of Business. My research has tended to focus on the assessment and development of leadership, dark personality, and psychological well-being, but I have studied a wide variety of topics as a consequence of my research collaborations with the U.S. Army and NASA.

I am currently on the editorial boards of nine journals and serve as a coeditor of Research in Occupational Stress and Well Being and as an associate editor of the Journal of Business and Psychology. In the past, I served in editorial roles at both the Journal of Managerial Psychology and Applied Psychology: An International Review.

Briefly, what are your main priorities? For example, how will you grow readership, what type of scholarship would you like to see in the journal, and what kind of content are you hoping to attract?

Christina M. Frederick: PLL has a unique focus on current research in leadership that can be readily applied to real-life situations. It is an important resource for leaders who have backgrounds in psychology, and we wish to strengthen that identity by seeking out high-quality research from noted scholars in the field of leadership. We also continue to support pieces that develop new leadership theories and that provide real-life leadership case studies.

As coeditors, Peter and I agree that we want to grow readership and enhance the reputation of PLL as a go-to place for leadership research. We will do that by focusing on greater efficiency in the review process so that we can get cutting-edge research and ideas to press more quickly. We will also publish articles on special topics that address current and widespread leadership issues. Last, we have discussed incorporating invited pieces by leaders that can be followed by responses from other psychology leaders and editorial board members.

Peter D. Harms: I really want PLL to be known as an outlet that addresses current developments in leadership scholarship, particularly those linked with events and trends unfolding in the real world. It is also my ambition that the work published in PLL will be seen as immediately useful for practitioners. So part of our aim at PLL is going to be to solicit high-impact submissions from the best scholars in the field of leadership, but we also intend to make decisions quickly. We want debates happening on the pages of our journal, but we also want to provide a platform where practitioners and academics both feel welcome to share their ideas. In other words, we want to be leaders in the field of leadership.

Why is this journal important for the field? What is its relevance to society/public health? What are the hot issues in your area right now? 

Christina M. Frederick: This journal is not just a venue for complex, basic leadership research, although we do support excellence in research. Rather, we hope that during our editorship at PLL, we can publish research articles that have direct ties to leadership practice and that appeal to those currently in leadership roles. Leaders today need new ideas and research-supported principles that they can apply directly to their decision making and practices. This is the niche we hope the journal will fill.

As for hot issues, there are so many in leadership today. One issue is managing change and uncertainty in this rapidly evolving world. This topic includes leadership in supporting the evolution of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in some geographical areas. Another topic is how to use artificial intelligence and new technologies to enhance leadership and organizations.

Peter D. Harms: Our vision for PLL is to provide straightforward, actionable information based on robust designs. If leadership is important, then it should matter for important things: not just profits and performance but health, well-being, and the sustainability of groups and organizations over time. We want authors to think big. At the same time, we want them to resist the urge to lean too heavily on theory-heavy, complicated models that are not actionable and may not stand up to statistical scrutiny. It is better to be boring and right than interesting and wrong. We will also be pushing PLL authors to embrace open-science practices. Again, we see this work as important and relevant for individuals, firms, and societies. It is important that we get it right.

What challenges, if any, lie ahead for the field?

Christina M. Frederick: Leaders and leadership must be relevant and useful. Individuals and organizations face many serious global challenges today. Thought leadership and research are needed to determine how to address these challenges and make the world a better place for everyone. I also believe that creating a dialogue around ethics and character in leaders, leadership, and other worldwide issues would lead to valuable outcomes.

Peter D. Harms: The field of leadership is wrestling with some existential questions about the foundations it has been built on. A number of recent articles have called into question the theories and measures of some of the most widely used constructs in leadership. As a discipline, we need to hold ourselves accountable for this, and the time has come to demand that the discipline do better. To that end, Christina and I will prioritize research ethics but also emphasize the need for good science. We want to provide a solid foundation for understanding and developing leaders and leadership in an unsettled world.

Do you have plans for a special issue or changes to the editorial process? Have you introduced or are you planning to introduce any changes? 

Christina M. Frederick: We do not have any special issues planned right now, but we have discussed ideas for future special issues. One idea is to create special issues where only an article (or two) is dedicated to the chosen topic and may be written by a recognized expert in the field. The article could then be followed by commentary on the topic written by editorial board members and other leadership experts.

We are recommitting to the focus of PLL: We wish to publish high-quality articles that focus on leaders and leadership and that are clearly situated in the psychology domain.

Last, we are discontinuing book reviews in the journal. We feel that our readers would be better served if we used those pages for the other types of articles published in PLL.

Peter D. Harms: Having special issues is absolutely an agenda item for us. At the moment, PLL publishes only a small number of articles per year. We are hoping to expand, and I think that special issues or target-and-response articles will be a big part of this. PLL should be a place where conversations can be had about emergent issues in the field of leadership. We are very open to suggestions and would encourage authors to come to us with ideas.